It takes a 'war room' to launch Netflix's series

Friday

Jul 26, 2013 at 8:32 AM

By Michael Liedtke, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS GATOS, Calif. — Netflix's Internet video subscription service works around the clock, but it's unusual for more than two dozen of the company's engineers and top managers to be huddled in a conference room at 10:30 on a midsummer Wednesday evening

This is a special occasion. It's near the end of a grueling day that will culminate in the premiere of ''Orange Is The New Black,'' the fourth exclusive Netflix series to be released in five months. The show's first episode is called ''I Wasn't Ready,'' and everyone in the room has been logging long hours to ensure that the title doesn't apply to the debut.

Netflix Inc. invited The Associated Press to its Los Gatos, Calif., headquarters for an unprecedented glimpse at the technical preparations that go into the release of its original programming. The shows have become the foundation of Netflix's push to build an Internet counterpart to HBO's premium cable channel.

Netflix made a name for itself as a DVD-by-mail provider and an Internet video streaming business mainly by offering content from other companies. Lately, the company has been releasing its own content as a way to hook new customers on its $8-per-month streaming service.

The company promised its 37.6 million worldwide subscribers that they could start watching all 13 episodes of its latest original series at the stroke of midnight, Pacific Time, on July 11. So Jaffe and Netflix engineering director Bob Heldt have summoned a battalion of key employees to a conference room named after ''Dark Passage,'' a 1947 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

On this night, the setting has been transformed into Netflix's version of a war room. The engineers are flanked by seven flat-screen televisions on one side of the room and two giant screens on the other.

One big screen is scrolling through Twitter to highlight tweets mentioning ''Orange Is The New Black,'' an offbeat drama set in a women's prison. The other screen is listing some of Netflix's most closely guarded information — the rankings of videos that are attracting the most viewers on an hourly basis.

If all goes well, the pizza and snacks that Netflix's bleary-eyed workers have been munching will be washed down with a champagne celebration after the show starts streaming.

The mission is to ensure each installment of ''Orange Is The New Black'' has been properly coded so the series can be watched on any of the 800 Internet-connected devices compatible with Netflix's service.

It's a complex task because Netflix has to account for viewers who have different Internet connection speeds, various screen sizes and different technologies that are running the devices.

About 120 variations of code have been programmed into ''Orange Is The New Black'' to prepare it to be streamed on Netflix throughout the U.S and 39 other countries. Another set of engineers had to ensure foreign-language subtitles and dubbing were in place and streaming properly.

Others are still checking to make certain that the English dialogue properly syncs with the video being shown at different Internet connection speeds. Just before another Netflix series, ''House of Cards,'' debuted in February, engineers detected two minutes of dialogue that was out of sync with video played on iPhones at certain speeds, prompting a mad scramble to fix the problem before the series was released to subscribers.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is so confident that his team will get it right that he doesn't feel a need to show up in the war room, or even bother to stay up late to make sure everything is going smoothly.

The stakes and anticipation surrounding Netflix's original series are much higher than with non-original programming from Netflix's library.

At the same time, Netflix is counting on the original programming to reduce the number of subscribers who drop the service.

This is important because Netflix charges by the month, making it easy for its subscribers to drop the service as soon as they conclude there's nothing interesting to watch. Netflix's cancellation rates usually hovered between 4 percent and 5 percent until the company stopped disclosing the figures last year.

Subscribers keep Netflix afloat because, like HBO, the company doesn't subsidize its programming with commercials.

Netflix believed ''Orange Is The New Black'' would have wide appeal because the series is the handiwork of Jenji Kohan, the creator of critically acclaimed ''Weeds,'' which aired for eight seasons on the Showtime cable channel. All 102 episodes of ''Weeds'' are now available on Netflix, providing valuable information about the number of subscribers who are likely to be interested in ''Orange Is The New Black.''

Netflix's emphasis on original programming has worked out well so far. ''House of Cards, a political drama starring Kevin Spacey, became the first made-for-the-Internet series to be nominated for multiple Emmys in major categories. The series received nine nominations, including outstanding dramatic series and best actor and actress in a drama. ''House of Cards'' also helped Netflix add more than 2 million subscribers during the first three months of the year.

Two other Netflix exclusives, ''Hemlock Grove'' and a revival of ''Arrested Development,'' rolled out in April and May. On Monday, Netflix said those series helped its service add 1.2 million global subscribers during the three months ending in June. Investors had been hoping for even bigger customer gains, increasing the pressure on the ''Orange Is The New Black'' to help Netflix deliver on its projection of about 2 million additional subscribers worldwide during the July-September quarter.

Investors clearly like the way things have been going. Since the end of last year, Netflix's stock has nearly tripled in value to about $250.

About a half-hour before the debut of ''The Orange Is The New Black,'' many subscribers are eagerly awaiting the series' release.

Finally, midnight strikes and the engineers are scurrying to different devices to see if ''Orange Is The New Black'' is streaming without glitches.

All the subtitles in different languages are working fine, too.

Just how smoothly things are going becomes apparent on the list of Netflix's most-watched shows.

Just seven minutes after its release, the first episode of ''Orange Is The New Block'' has grabbed the No. 9 slot. It takes less than a half-hour for it to move up to Netflix's third-most watched video, even though it's way past prime time in the U.S.

About 35 minutes after the series' debut, Jaffe and Heldt uncorked the champagne raised a toast to their co-workers to celebrate the successful start.

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